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Christopher Dummitt: Manosphere influencers learned tactics from progressives

Documentary reveals progressive tactics of taboo-breaking and speaking truth to power are now aimed at progressive establishments

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The hardest thing for contemporary progressives to come to grips with is that they wield cultural and institutional power.

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For so long, progressive ideology has pitched itself — and often genuinely has been — an attack on established privilege on behalf of the marginalized and the oppressed. It’s about speaking truth to power. About taking on the system, or thoroughly unmasking power so it can be made to work for everyday people.

Christopher Dummitt: Manosphere influencers learned tactics from progressives Back to video

But what happens when progressive ideology becomes the power? When it becomes the system?

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I found myself thinking about this, as I watched the new Louis Theroux documentary Inside the Manosphere on Netflix. Theroux takes on a much-hated villain in progressive circles — the most extreme elements of anti-feminist male influencers associated with right-wing politics.

These guys openly declare their love of Donald Trump. They blame women and feminism for unmaking men. They don’t seem to have found a conspiracy theory that isn’t worth their time. In this documentary, we hear a story about a Satanist cabal controlling the culture to turn everyone trans. Oh, and the Jews. They seem especially fond of the phrase: “kill the Jews.”

They are an unpleasant bunch, and Louis Theroux is an amusing tour guide into this bizarre corner of the online world. He’s like your average middle-class English dad, calmly asking the influencers about their most controversial statements and letting them talk. Watching it is a bit like witnessing a car crash; you’re horrified, but you can’t look away.

If you look online, you’ll find plenty of people criticizing Theroux for not attacking the manosphere more aggressively — or for making the documentary at all and “platforming” these men and their odious views.

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My guess is that most people who watch it — almost certainly most Canadians of any political stripe — will find what these influencers say more than a little disturbing.

But that is precisely the point. These guys are easy targets. They are the villains the left most wants to fight because they are so disreputable. It’s not even clear that they believe what they are saying. Theroux gets some of them — notably HSTikkyTokky — to admit as much. The more outrageous the statement, the more hits they get. More clicks mean more engagement, and more engagement means greater economic reward.

And that brings us back to cultural power.

Because these guys, despite all of their followers, are not genuinely mainstream. If someone said the kinds of things they say at most workplaces, they would be fired. Politicians who espoused these ideas would be kicked out of their positions by party leaders. Husbands or boyfriends who tried these ideas on their girlfriends or wives would likely receive an eye roll at best — or perhaps a slap across the face.

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Even the influencers themselves aren’t immune. For instance, while they preach one-sided monogamy — that is, monogamy for the woman while the man sleeps with whomever he wants — their girlfriends do not seem especially enthusiastic. At best, their reaction is resigned acceptance. In one case, influencer Myron Gaines suggested he could maintain several long-term relationships at once. His girlfriend looked deeply skeptical. Not long after filming, the two broke up.

Theroux’s explanation for what led the influencers down this path is largely pop-psychological — damaged childhoods, absent fathers, emotional insecurity. There could be something to that.

But the documentary isn’t especially interested in a wider lens. Theroux largely repeats the popular line that these men resent losing easy access to male privilege. Their rise is interpreted as part of a broader backlash against the gains of an equality-focused age.

This is fear talking more than insight.

What seems to be at work instead is the breaking of taboos. It is not clear how many young fans actually buy into the retrograde ideas being sold. When asked, many say these influencers are not as sexist or racist as critics claim. What they seem to relish is that the manosphere figures dare to say the supposedly unsayable.

These men say forbidden things. They play in the world of taboo — smashing the barrier between what polite society says you must say and what some people dare to say.

And this brings us back to progressive cultural power.

Today’s dominant moral language — call it woke, call it authenticity liberalism — is pitched as speaking truth to power on behalf of the marginalized. In practice, it has become the new orthodoxy. It is the new status quo.

Back in the 1960s, hippies challenged moral convention by growing their hair long, doing drugs and adopting a don’t-care attitude toward work and middle-class respectability. But with legalized cannabis available on every corner, and with rampant illicit drug use visible on many streets, the old rebellion is no longer rebellious.

Our courts now tell us that even restricting drug use near children’s playgrounds may violate the Charter rights of drug users. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

What these manosphere influencers show us is one of the new ways rebellion manifests itself — by breaking the taboos of the current cultural order, saying things that are shocking or offensive to the mainstream.

The difficulty for many progressives is that they are still adjusting to the reality that they wield power. They are the new Victorian school ma’ams telling people to sit up straight. They are the 1960s school principals sending kids home for wearing their hair too long.

Rebellion looks different when you’re the establishment.

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